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When it comes to being a great at public speaking and presenting, few things will help you as much as knowing how to build your talk. Here is how you craft a presentation that is simple, interesting, organized and smacks of professionalism and skill. A few rules before we get started:
1. Keep it simple. The average adult attention span is 90 seconds. The average adult only retains 7% of what you say one day later.
2. Be very clear about your point. If you are not clear about what you are trying to convey, your audience won’t be either.
3. Remove some content. When I travel, I pack my bag, then I start pulling out clothes I won’t need. Do the same with your content. Take out 25% of what you intended to say, and your audience will thank you.
4. Make it entertaining. Replace that 25% with stories, humor, examples, analogies and audience interaction.
5. Always practice your remarks out loud before show time.
So how do you build the perfect presentation? It’s so simple, you will want to kick me for not telling you sooner. (Instead of kicks, please send referrals for new business. After all, I have a small child to feed and another one on the way next month!) Below is a sample presentation about one of my life passions, travel.
1. Start with your message or thesis. What main theme do you want to convey to your audience?
Example Thesis: Foreign travel enriches your life.
2. Figure out your 3 or 4 Supporting Points.
Supporting Point #1: You meet fascinating people.
Supporting Point #2: You learn valuable skills like negotiation.
Supporting Point #3: You create life-long memories.
3. Think of 4 or 5 anecdotes or examples that help illustrate your Supporting Points.
Anecdote #1: Meeting Osawa, the 83-year-old Japanese man we encoutered climbing Nepal’s Everest Region. He treks in Nepal each year and submerges himself in 33-degree water at 14,000 feet.
Anecdote #2: Negotiating - poorly - with shop owners while in a hurry on the way to the airport in Bali.
Anecdote #3: Spending the night in a tree house in a Namibian game reserve, 5 miles from the lodge, with a lion sleeping below us.
Anecdote #4: Watching a wildebeest birth in Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater while a hyena sat watching in the distance.
4. Connect your Supporting Points to the corresponding anecdotes or examples. For the sake of simplicity, I have listed Anecdotes 1-3 to illustrate Supporting Points 1-3, respectively.
5. Use your most interesting, shocking, humorous or memorable anecdote to open your talk. Your goal in opening your talk is to hook your audience, so put your best stuff first. For this example, I’ll use the wildebeest birth to open.
6. Circle back to your Open to close your talk. This is known as the “Hook & Echo.” It wraps up your talk for the audience and makes you look like a skilled and organized speaker.
If you follow this format for every talk you give from now on, you will be better prepared and organized than 99% of the presenters in the world.
As G Love says, It’s that easy.
Robert Graham
Robert Graham is the Principal of GrahamComm, LLC (www.grahamcomm.net), a consulting and training company that helps clients increase their sales and deliver outstanding presentations. He can be reached at 415-652-0763 or Robert@grahamcomm.net.
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